The St. Lawrence Sophomore Success Initiative offers sophomores a variety of resources—including sophomore seminars featuring intensive mentoring and a calendar of events designed to allow sophomores to connect to services and programs across campus—to aid them in exploring their interests, building a network and designing a plan for success.

There are many factors as to why the same experiment might produce two different sets of results—but a new review confirms that the experimenter’s gender could play an important role. The researchers behind the review think that these biases could skew the results of clinical trials and misrepresent how well medications work. The authors suggest some policies, like new kinds of reporting and experimental controls, that they hope will help the problem in the future.

“I think the big takeaway is that [experimenter gender] is something that should be reported and tracked,” Colin Chapman, the study’s first author from Uppsala University in Sweden told Gizmodo. “Right now it isn’t, and it’s a very simple thing to control and report for. There’s really no excuse.”

Chapman’s team’s
paper
in
Scientific Advances
finds a number of concerning correlations. Children seem to do better on IQ tests when experimenters are female. Some studies find that men report less pain when the experimenter is female, but women report more pain when experimenters are male. Researchers studying sex find that men report more sexual encounters when a woman administers the questionnaire.

Chapman’s study tries to explain the difference with a few hypotheses, like the psychological and social stress of dealing with the opposite gender, or hoping to look more fit to a potential mate. Obviously these results are pretty rooted in the overarching majorities and social norms—but those social norms are biasing science.

The study concludes that it’s up to journals, funding agencies, and universities to require that experimenter gender be reported, and that an analysis of potential gender effects is included in research. Chapman also suggested a 50/50 gender split when it comes to selecting experimenters. Perhaps one day, computerized experimenters could reduce the bias.

Consumer electronics company Vizio will host an 80s-themed outdoor picnic this summer for its full-time workers and their families at the beach.

Activities will include kayaking, stand-up paddle boarding and other kid-friendly events.

Technology accessory company ZAGG started the summer with an employee outing to a minor-league baseball game.

Full-time, hourly, and temporary employees that work out of the company's headquarters in Salt Lake City and their families were eligible for the event and 445 people attended.

Employees and their family members got a t-shirt, backpack and food at the ball game.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said that nearly 75% of companies increased benefits to retain workers, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. About a third of all companies have increased their benefits, with 72% of those citing worker retention as the reason.